Quell the Flames
by TManFreeman
Summary: An escape, a mission, and a return. 25 years after Twin Peaks, 5 years after Lost, the story is finally complete.
1. Chapter 1: Quell the Flames

_A small island in an endless sea._

His long work is done. The only whispers in the trees now are the rustlings of wind in tangled emerald limbs. On the island floating in the middle of every ocean, Walt Lloyd now sits alone, the ghosts of his father's people exorcised forevermore.

A small fire crackles at his feet, exposing features grown rugged and mature over 5 years of hiking, fishing, and farming on the surface of the verdant isle he learned to call home so long ago. His hair has been shorn, leaving only a thin sheet of dark over his scalp. He feels freer marooned on this spit of sand than he ever did in the "real world".

That's the term. That's how he always thinks of it. The "real world", as if he'd stepped through the looking glass and found himself in a fantasy. Yet there was something more tangible, more real in this fantasy than in the bricks and mortar of civilization.

This place wasn't his responsibility. Not yet anyway. Hugo stood sentinel over the island, becoming one with it and knowing its secrets instinctively. Even in his now infinite wisdom, Hugo was the same man he'd been. Though he knew the secrets of the deep magic that came from the magnetic wonder at the island's core, he still came from his roaming cabin in the woods to play backgammon on the shoreline each day. This simple, innate humanity was what made him suited to the job, perhaps suited to carry it on forever.

Walt's capacity on the island was less clear. Rescued from an institution and given asylum here, he'd wandered the woods, feeling passing ghosts chill his every step. It took time and learning to see them, to know them almost as flesh and blood rather than as feelings or impressions or glimpses from the corner of the eye. He met his father first. Weary and wretched, Michael was a shell of the man who'd first brought Walt to the island. Walt touched his shoulder and it was solid under his fingers, yet the breeze blew through his father's torso and lapped at his skin. There had been no words. The growth of his troubled son into a man of true knowledge moved Michael and forgave him in ways that words never could. He was gone the next morning, lost in light. The rest would follow.

Walt stokes the fire and stands. There's a clinking sound coming from the lighthouse he tends and inhabits that requires investigation. He hikes the sloping rocks that lead to the grassy finger of land the lighthouse juts from and enters, climbing slowly and deliberately to the top floor.

Reforged from the sands of the island by the lightning of a passing tempest, the mirrors dominating the towering lighthouse's mechanisms reflect darkness. At this moment the world is dark, but the darkness reflected is not a vision of the external lack of light, but of an internal lack of anything; a black like pitch that doesn't appear in the natural world.

Walt traces his hand over the names scratched into the dial. Most have been scratched out. Many applicants for a position already filled. Finally he settles on the one the mirrors reflect, 66 degrees; COOPER. Looking up again, he sees deeper into the darkness; into another place where old Douglas firs provide the whispers and beyond the trees into the world behind the veil.

* * *

_Another place._

The horror never subsides. Meticulous in life and same in the half-life he now inhabits, Dale Cooper has kept count of every minute spent in this hell. Sometimes he finds himself counting numbers he's sure he'd passed earlier and sometimes he's suddenly much further along than he'd been seconds earlier. The subjective nature of time on Earth is magnified here in the Black Lodge. Relativity is heightened to such a degree that choosing a path through a hallway can shift one's frame of reference by days or months. Regardless he has continued his count. Like a prisoner scratching notches in the wall of some dank cell, waiting for the gallows, he counts. 25 years have passed. He's fairly certain of it. He saw Laura today. She kissed him, whispered knowledge he'd dreamed long ago into his ear, and vanished again. 25 years of objective time, perhaps a week of subjective time. Growing old in moments, this place had stolen his life and not even given him the courtesy of suffering for long enough to grow used to horror. No, the horror never subsides.

The other living souls trapped in the nether of the Lodge were not a comfort to him. His doppelganger was long gone, but he saw another mirror of himself tracking his steps from time to time. Out of the corner of his eye he'd see Agent Desmond, his dark mirror, lost in the madness of eternity.

This was a place of mirrors. Of reflections that made their subjects uglier, like some deranged artist had painted the world with the Lodge as his canvas. Wandering the endless scarlet curtained passages were the milky-eyed doubles of the people of Twin Peaks. Dale's memories of the real town were his most treasured possessions, yet he found them waning; Changing and distorting as he faced the warped visages of the people he'd come to love bearing down upon him.

Today, the first day he could hope this nightmare might end, he encountered the new height of its perversion. Soft blonde hair tangled in knots, clothes scratched and bloody, eyes dead and vacant, Annie Blackburn's shadow-self stood, fading in and out of his perception as blue light flickered from some unseen scaffold off the stage of the universe.

Dale crumbled. His hands shook like an alcoholic's, the temptation to drink from the glass of madness and despair now overwhelming.

"Annie?" He knew on some level that this wasn't her; that this was a tasteless parody of her existence, yet some part of him yearned to believe she was here. That he could still carry out the plan, save the girl, and return to his new rural paradise the valiant hero. _Is this how they broke Desmond?_ He wondered. The delusion persisted.

"Th-ere i-s a wa-ay o-uut." the phantom intoned. Dale looked up into her face, saw only Annie now; only salvation.

"Show me."

"Th-ro-uugh th-e cuu-rrta-ins. Off st-age." Annie gestured and the scarlet draperies surrounding Dale began to slide away in perfect silence, as if drawn on greased cotton. Cold wind whipped at his skin and as he looked past the curtains his eyes began to water. His breath stopped in his throat. His skin clung to him like a screaming child clinging to its mother. The world beyond the curtains was not the forests of the Northwest. It was not Glastonbury Grove. It could not be described, only compared to the wildest visions of hell.

Dale shut his eyes and gripped his ears until his fingernails tore bloody gashes into his head. "Th-is iss a wai-ting ro-oom." the man had said, and now he understood. The Black Lodge was not a labyrinth of curtains and tile. That was just the façade, the sane alternative to the insane reality. To know the true form of the Lodge and its inhabitants was to know madness and the truth was pouring down on Dale's skull like acid rain. This _was_ how they'd broken Desmond. This is how they would break him.

Suddenly, Dale felt a hand pull his own from his ear and clasp it. He felt himself being led rapidly this way and that, the savage wind lashing his back. He guessed he must be being led into that hell by Annie's shadow; finally united in torment with his lost love.

As he moved, though, he felt the tide of darkness waning. The winds subsided and faded. The howling of the damned disappeared. He opened his eyes to find himself being led not by Annie, but by a young man of intense countenance. This tall, dark-skinned spectre pulled him forward, his face locked in a mask of determination.

"Who are you?" Dale asked, sobering from his encounter with oblivion.

"I'm someone who can help you. I think. I've done this sort of thing before. Getting people out of the spots they're trapped in." The man was trying to sound sure of himself.

"You've seen this place before?"

"Ah… Not exactly."

They stopped in a square room. One of the infinite identical square rooms Cooper had found himself in in his time in the Lodge. Or perhaps they were all the same room. But this room, upon further inspection, was different. Where often a marble statue stood, there was instead a mirror; a looking glass of ornate design. The man stepped toward it slightly hesitantly, like a traveler who suspects he knows the way home, but is beginning to feel doubt at the unfamiliarity of his surroundings.

"What do you know about where these halls lead?" the man asked, his brown eyes fixed on Cooper's.

"I was told that with perfect courage this was the way to the White Lodge."

The man smiled, "White Lodge. I feel like I've heard that before; maybe in my sleep." He turned to face the looking glass, "Do you trust me?"

"I don't know who you are."

"My name is Walter Lloyd. I'm like you. I have the dreams. I see things. I can help."

Just then a piercing roar of rage tore through Walt's words. Dale turned to see the curtains at the other end of the room ripped open as Chester Desmond flew into the room. Standing with arms splayed wide and head down like an animal, the insanity that had gripped him was more apparent than ever.

Walt felt fear, "How were you supposed to reach this White Lodge?"

Dale stood completely still, the same fear magnified within himself, "I was told I would have to face my shadow self, the dweller at the threshold. That I would have to have perfect courage, but I failed. I was afraid."

"Well I think this is your second chance. It better be because the only other way I see out of here is dying." Walt looked around frantically, terrified at the pervasive unnatural atmosphere. The only magic here was pitch black, like the smoke that had haunted so many of his dreams. This cosmic black hole was somehow antithesis to the Island he called home, a doppelganger locus of sinister design.

Dale choked back tears of fear and despair. He looked up into the eyes of the man who'd come to Deer Meadows before him, of the man who'd lost himself there. In those mad, lost eyes he suddenly found clarity.

"I'm not a coward." he said in perfectly measured tone, "I was afraid to fail before, but I see now. I see you, the man who failed where I succeeded. The man who's path I've walked behind. The Scandinavians believe in something called a vardoger, a kind of doppelganger who walks ahead and takes your path before you do. I think that's what you are to me Agent Desmond, but not anymore. Because the path you've taken isn't mine anymore. I haven't failed. I've just been delayed for a while, but I'm going back now, back to set things right."

Agent Desmond's tortured face contorted and he charged screaming in an animal voice unlike anything Cooper had ever heard, except the voice of Leland Palmer, screaming in agony and ecstasy as his alter ego was revealed. Walt grabbed Dale by the hand and shoved him toward the mirror, which now rippled like gently drifting water.

Through the looking glass the wayward spirits tumbled, through darkness, then through blue, then into blinding white light. Pressure receded as Dale felt dampness on his skin, his clothes heavy with moisture, drawing him back toward the dark.

Walt's hand grasped his, pulled him back to the light, onto a sandy coastline edged with tall, billowing trees. The ocean stretched out forever in all directions.

Dale looked up into the sky and saw the sun eclipsed by Walt's grinning face, "Welcome to the White Lodge, Mr. Cooper."

"How did you- How did you know that would work?"

"I didn't, but I came to that place through my magic mirrors, I thought maybe we could get back the same way."

For the first time in 25 years, Dale smiled.

"Through the looking glass."


	2. Chapter 2: Cycles

**_Prologue_**

_1990._

Darkness. Water. Light. So it is and so it was as Garland Briggs emerges from the softly glowing pool. His heavy clothes weigh him down, but strong hands pull him onto a stone floor and swiftly retreat from him. The floor is warm.

Two feet step slowly, measuredly toward him. He cannot see them through the haze of his bloodshot eyes, but he can hear the fall of bare feet on stone next to his head. He blinks. The veil is lifted.

An Asian man of entirely indeterminable age stands over him, looking down with the concern with which a farmer examines an injured workhorse. Briggs feels no warmth in his stare.

_How did you come to be here?_ The man asks in a dry, gruff voice. Garland recognizes the language; Japanese, but a little off, as if the speaker had spent a long time without anyone to talk to.

"I… came through the… waiting room." Briggs manages to sputter out. He coughs out a mix of blood and salty water onto the stone floor and turns to lift himself with his hands. Before he can, the man lifts him roughly to his feet and turns him toward a lit passage.

_You will be tested._ The stranger shoves Briggs down a rough-hewn stone hallway into a sort of makeshift office space.

Briggs shakes his head, the disorientation beginning to fade, "Now wait just a minute? Who are you? Who's in command here?"

The stranger stares at him silently for a moment. _Get on the table._ Garland notices with some concern that the man has picked up a long, engraved dagger from the desk. He points the knife toward a rusted hospital bed lacking a mattress. With a glance at the dagger, Briggs reluctantly complies.

The stranger straps him down and affixes a primitive metal cap to his head. Wires extend outward to a bank of aging computers and electrodes.

"W-what is this about?"

_You will be tested._

Pain shoots through Garland's body as if he'd been injected with a syringe of corrosive acid. Every vein pops up from his skin as electricity burns through him. Images flash through his mind as neurons fire at random. His arm around Betty's shoulders as Bobby takes his first steps, the white manor from his dreams, Agent Cooper laughing as he struggled with a fish. The simple beauty of life becomes his retreat from the agony that he feels must be his death. The stranger nods.

_Your heart is pure. But you have touched the darkness. You will be marked._ The searing pain subsides, but a quick, sharp burning on the side of Garland's head causes him to recoil. He turns to face the stranger, who now stands holding a small brand. The cooling brand's design reminds him fleetingly of the radiation warning on the door to the base.

"Where… Am… I?" the Major gasps as the stranger removes his bonds.

_You have returned to your Earth, but not to normality. I believe the legends of your people call this place the White Lodge. We don't have a name for it. It is just the island._ The Stranger regards him with an intense expression. Briggs lets his fear subside. There is an unspoken understanding between the two men that it is time for palaver.

"Why have I been brought here? There was a light and a sort of ringing and I found myself… on the shores of hell. And then I was here."

_There is a great man. He is the master of this realm. He has brought you here. The purpose of this action I do not know._

"How is this possible? Is this man an extraterrestrial of some nature?"

The stranger appears amused, the closest thing to a positive emotion he's allowed to pass over his face, _He is strange, but he is of this world; More so than most. The light of the pool is the light of his soul. It is his power and it is the gateway to other worlds. You have passed through one of these worlds, as the dark power on this island did long ago._

"Dark power?"

_There was a man here, many years ago. In his rush to escape this place he tapped into the light you emerged from. The great man could not kill him for this, but he punished him by driving him into the light. What emerged was not the man, but something else; The Yin to our protector's Yang perhaps. This creature of the Black Lodge is now trapped on this island, but I think perhaps, another thing of this kind is loose where you come from._

Briggs was silent. He understood now the reason why he'd been summoned here. The people of Twin Peaks had had trouble believing Leland Palmer could be responsible for his daughter's death and now their disbelief was justified. There was a monster loose in Twin Peaks and only the pure of heart would be able to hunt it.

"Sir I understand your master's wishes. Now how do I return ho-" before Garland could finish his sentence, his words were drowned out by a whining drone. Light filled his vision and the air crackled with electromagnetic force. He felt as if his head might explode and then… trees, creaking in the wind.

* * *

_**CYCLES**_

_2016._

Walt draped a thick hemp blanket around Dale's shoulders and returned to his place at the other side of the fire. The crackling flames sent lines of light spiralling into the sky and a white plume of smoke flowing toward the softly crashing waves. Through the haze, Walt watched his new companion stare with a blank intensity into the heart of the glow.

Watching this lost soul, Walt was troubled by the terrors locked in his own mind. He knew there was a journey ahead of him. He'd seen it in his dreams. A darkness lurking in the past threatened the now. Perhaps the evil he'd felt was the force that had driven this man into the parallel hellscape he'd dragged him out of.

Cooper glanced up from the fire and his stare bored into Walt.

"Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?"

Walt sighed and prodded the fire with a thin strand of banyan.

"To the first question, you're on an island in the South Pacific. Well last time I checked it was in the South Pacific anyway. To the second; like I said, my name is Walter Lloyd. I've been on this island for years and I have the gift like you. As to the third, I'm as clueless as you. I'm not the man in charge."

"You said this was the White Lodge. How do you know about the White Lodge."

"The big man, the man in charge, he talks a lot. Half the time I have no clue what he's talking about. Mostly because he spends half his time talking about comic books from before I was born, but here and there I hear him talking about the things he knows now."

"Knows _now_?"

"Yeah he's… He's special; like in a different way than me and you. This place is his destiny and I think it's seeped into him a little bit; like filled the cracks of his mind. I knew him when he was just my friend, just Hurley, and he hasn't changed in a lot of ways, but in a lot of ways he's someone completely different now. He told me this… this sort of legend about some evil sorcerors called dugpas and this Indian tribe that tried to stop them. The story went that the dugpas believed in some sort of dark power called the Black Lodge. These natives believed in a White Lodge, like a place where everything decent in the world comes from. There was a fight and one side got wiped out. He didn't tell me which. Anyway, when I felt that place you were in, when I saw the darkness in the mirror, I knew I was looking at the Black Lodge; and if the power there was opposite to the power of the island, this _must_ be the White Lodge from the story."

Dale gazed, again, into the flames.

"I think I need to meet the man in charge."

* * *

_Pennsylvania. _

_1961._

"You fucking liar. I know. I know about your little tryst with that teenage whore. I know about all the women and the money and the lies."

"Heather, I don't know how many goddamn times I have to tell you I am the head of this house and I will not listen to your hysterical bullshit. I am the man in charge here! I gave you everything and you accuse me of this?!"

"How stupid do you think I am Tony? You think I'm blind? You think I don't realize that you're not inheriting all of this money from these dead relatives that keep popping up. How many times do you think you can fake a burial and make all the questions go away?"

"So that's how it is, eh? The good things won't keep you quiet anymore. Well you know what, Heather? I don't need this. I took a detour into living straight for you, but clearly I'm not the straight-living type. A tiger just can't change his stripes. So I'll leave."

"You don't have to leave, because I'm already on my way out the door, Tony. And I'm taking my son. Maybe your fucked up life will inspire him to be a better man than his father."

* * *

In some ways the jungle was nothing like the woods around Twin Peaks. The humidity that made Dale's now fairly battered suit hang heavy and the insects the size of a human fist for instance. In other ways though, they were exactly the same. As if the world had copied the soul of the North-Western forest and pasted it here in the farthest place from nowhere. The island's trees held the same sense of animation as the firs of Washington, swaying back and forth like restless sentinels weary of their watch. Dale felt the same sense of unreality here as he had when he had first found the Log Lady's home nestled far from normality. He stopped suddenly.

"She's dead."

Walt halted and turned to face him, "Who's dead?"

Dale had a haunted look in his eyes "The Log Lady. Pete Martell. Mayor Milford. _It's been 25 years._ 25 years since I've felt my feet touch the earth! 25 years since I've had a goddamn cup of coffee! You probably weren't even born the last time I breathed air."

Walt put his hand on Dale's shoulder, "Calm down Mr. Cooper. It's all good. You're out now. You're okay."

"But what about the rest of them?! What about Harry? What about Andy and Lucy? What about Audrey? For God's sake I don't even know if Annie is alive." Dale was in a panic now. A panic he'd been holding back for two decades.

"She's alive, Dude."

Walt smiled and Dale turned to follow his gaze and find the source of the voice. Where he'd just been walking, there now stood a rough cabin that looked as if it had been sat there for years. In the doorway stood a tall, thin man with long curly hair and a thickly braided beard. He stepped quickly toward Dale, who was still shaking, and wrapped him in a tight embrace. The sort of warm, fatherly hug one usually doesn't feel again after childhood.

"I'm Hurley. I think I'm the guy you're looking for."

He released Dale, who found himself slipping about 6 inches back to the ground.

Walt grinned, "Hey Hurley. I've got a bit of a story to tell you."

* * *

The three men sat at a thick wooden table in the center of the cabin. Dale and Hugo faced one another on either side while Walt sat at Hugo's right. Dale noted a well-worn chair to his left and wondered idly who the missing party was.

Regaining focus, he took a moment to get his bearings. The cabin appeared to be cobbled together from differently aged sections of wood. The load bearing beams looked as if they'd been cut and carved not many years ago, but here and there the building's frame looked incredibly old and small scorch marks darkened the wood. To the right of the door stood a simple kitchen with an old-time ice box and a wood-burning stove. To the left sat a scratched rocking chair and some cluttered bookshelves. The image of a dead astronaut's skeletal corpse floating through space stared out from a comic book's cover into Dale's eyes and gave him cause to snap his attention back to the conversation at hand.

"-so we trekked for about a day before we found you here." Walt was finishing his recap of recent events.

"Dude, why did you come looking for me? You know how this always works. Protector finds _you_ when he needs to. I don't make the Jedi Code, I just follow it."

Dale jumped into the conversation, "It was my idea actually. I needed to do something. I needed to get some forward momentum and I'll tell you this: Sometimes you just need to wander around in the woods until you figure out where you're going. It's one of life's universal truths."

Hugo smiled, "Sure is, man. So have you figured it out?"

Dale leaned into the table, "I think I'm beginning to, but before I go any further, I want to know what happened to Annie. You said you knew she was alive."

Hugo scratched at his unkempt beard, becoming more serious and somehow more aged in the blink of an eye.

"Before I came here, I was crazy."

Walt looked ready to protest, but Hugo raised a hand to silence him.

"I was, I'm not ashamed of it anymore. It was my wound. It was the hole in me. Every one of us who comes here has a hole in their soul and somehow, some way, the island fills us and makes us whole. When I agreed to take this job, to protect the island, it made me whole too. I was filled up with the… like the spirits I guess of all of the protectors who'd come before. The further back they go, the hazier they are. Honestly I can usually only really tap into the memories of Jacob, the last guy who took this job on. But it's enough. Jacob was interested in you, dude. You were one of the candidates for this job, like me and Walt. He was watching you for years, from when you were only little. He saw everything that happened in Twin Peaks, but on that night in '91, you vanished from his sight. That's never happened before. The mirrors in the lighthouse see everything in the world, but somehow you left the world. So he sent his number two, Richard, to check things out. He found Annie in a hospital in Washington, pretty beat up, but alive. And he picked something off one of the nurses."

Hugo stood and walked to an old chest laid against the back wall. As he opened it, Dale could see piles of yellowed maps, old clothing, and file folders marked with a strange octagonal symbol. Rifling through, Hugo finally plucked a tiny object from the very bottom of the chest and placed it delicately on the table.

Dale stared, "The ring. My god. The ring."

The small green ring seemed to hum with sinister intent. Over the last few hours Dale had begun to feel sanity and normality returning to his life, but the quiet comfort of the island was nullified by the presence of this artifact of evil.

Hugo sat down again, "The symbol engraved in the ring led Richard to Owl Cave. In there he found the legends of the local native tribe, along with a map to the Black Lodge. Just a few days ago I sent my own number two out to find Annie and find out what she knows about the Lodges. I guess now that I have an actual survivor of the black here, it's kind of a moot point."

"But did he find her?" Dale found himself getting impatient. This was unusual for him. The stirring in his chest at the thought of Annie drew him back 25 years to the last time he'd seen her face. He wondered what that face might look like now.

"Don't worry dude, he found her. If anyone can get a job done, it's Ben Linus. He had to trek through the Northwest wilderness for a few days, but he finally found a bunch of Cascadian separatists living in a forest commune on the border. She's been with them for a few months now." Hugo's tone had become significantly more sympathetic. Dale could tell this was a man with no shortage of empathy despite his secluded life.

"Why were you so interested in the Black Lodge all of a sudden?" Walt asked.

Hugo sighed wearily and stared at his clasped hands, "There's a reason that the two lodges are so tightly wound together. The universe has to remain in balance. You know, like the Force, right? We're the light side, they're the dark side. Both lodges are mostly isolated from the outside world. That helps keep things from getting too messed up. Over 27 years ago there was a string of murders in the Northwestern states that Jacob figured were acted out by an agent of the Black Lodge. He called a man here to intervene and help stop the bloodshed. That man's name was Briggs. Do you know why Jacob would have chosen Briggs to bring here?"

Dale looked down in confusion, "I know about Major Briggs' disappearance, but I haven't got a clue why he'd be the one taken. He was a man of great spiritual enlightenment, but he wasn't strictly a part of the case. Besides, by that time we'd caught the killer as far as the world knew."

Hugo gave Dale a knowing look, "But you didn't catch him, did you? You were still chasing the real killer when you disappeared. And he's still out there isn't he?"

Dale's eyes widened, "How can you know that?"

Hugo reached into the chest and produced a file folder. He slid it across the table. Dale's fingers shook as he opened the folder. It was familiar. It was the same office supply the FBI had been using when he'd last seen his office two decades earlier; the same sort of folder into which the gruesome photos of Laura Palmer's mangled corpse had been slid as they awaited being filed along with a million other profiles of dead girls.

The stuffed folder spilled like a river bursting through a dam as Dale's fingers worked the clasp open. Photos, FBI paperwork, and newspaper clippings of varying age fell onto the table's scratched surface. The faces of 3 girls stared up into Dale's eyes.

He picked up a picture of a pretty brunette. He knew her face.

"Ronette Pulaski? Then these are…"

Hugo's face was lined with pain and weariness, "These are the victims since you left. Ronette was… she was found in a few places a week after you disappeared. There was a small piece of paper with the letter 'E' written on it found under her fingernail." He pointed to a second photo of a red-haired, freckled girl of around 15, "Molly Newton. She was found in her grandparents' apartment in Maryland 6 days later. She'd been raped and decapitated. Her head was on the mantle. They found an 'O' in her ring finger. That was the last one for a long time."

Walt put a hand on Hugo's shoulder. The tall man was shaking, near tears. Dale could see that this was not because he was a stranger to death, but because he had the kind of soul that would never let him be comfortable with it.

"And the third girl?" Dale lifted the picture. It was different from the others; the colours more vivid than he was used to seeing in a photograph. She had dark, almost black hair, a slender nose, and a bright smile. Dale felt a strange sense of familiarity.

Hugo composed himself, "Kayla Briggs. Her body was found a week ago. Raped, stabbed repeatedly, wrapped in plastic and thrown in the river. The river that runs through Twin Peaks. There was an 'R' under her fingernail."

"Sir… Are you telling me this girl… This is the daughter of Robert Briggs?"

"Yeah. She's the granddaughter of the man who was brought here. Do you understand now?"

"I think I do. I need to go back to Twin Peaks."

* * *

The night was well-lit by a large, almost unnaturally bone-white moon. Walt sat staring up at it from Hugo's porch, his dark skin eerily reflecting the milky paleness of the orb. His face was a contradiction.

For several nights he hadn't slept. For several more the dreams had visited him. Visions of the future rapidly darkening as a blackness far behind him swallowed the sun. This deathly specter of darkness was ever expanding, this he somehow knew, yet he could not turn to look at it. It was behind and so it was closed to him. He could only step ever forward on a path that disappeared under his feet.

On the cot laid out inside, Cooper lay still. He was untroubled by nightmares. Walt supposed the soul couldn't hang on to memories of unearthly places. Perhaps that was why nobody could bring forth memories of the Black Lodge from their minds. Perhaps that was how Cooper could survive 25 years of torment and regain his sanity short days later.

Hugo stepped out onto the porch and lowered himself down next to Walt. His face, much changed by years of hard living and self-discipline, still held the warmth and empathy Walt had seen in it the day they met in the ruins of a fallen plane. Tonight Hugo's face was sad, holding a deep pity.

"What's the matter Hurley?"

"You've had the dreams, haven't you?"

"Every night for a week. Every night the dark gets a little closer. What does it mean?"

Hugo sighed and ran a hand through his beard.

"The Island and the Black Lodge aren't part of… Time I guess. They're outside of it. They like, transcend it. And the war between them is going on all through time. The souls of every world war soldier, every cave dude, and every astronaut a million years from now are part of it. There's a balance. Good and evil, love and suffering. It's in all of us, but its breaking. The Black Lodge has agents on Earth not just now, but in our past too, and despite everything we've seen, the past can be changed. They have that power, just like Desmond did. I've felt that blackness in the past creeping up on me for a month now. I know somebody has to go back and make sure they don't erase all of this before we can stop them in the present. I can't. I have to be here. I made a promise to Jack and I'm going to keep it until this island is dust if I can. I thought Cooper could do it. I opened the portal in the mirrors to draw him here, but he hasn't had the dreams. I think his destiny is back in Twin Peaks."

Walt stared in confusion and tried to quash a twisting in his stomach at the idea of a paradox wiping out his entire life before it even began.

"Why did you think he was the one?"

"He's special. It's in his blood. He's part of the tapestry Jacob wove; the web that connected all of our lives even before the island. He's Locke's brother."

"What?" Walt's eyes widened, his breath quickened.

"It's all in my head now. All the chance encounters in diners and bars. The moments we all swept through each other's lives without knowing it. Anthony Cooper, Locke's father, the man who made Sawyer, had a wife. He had a real family that he was funding with his cons, for a while anyway. I don't know what made him leave them, what made him go so bad, but I think he might be the Black Lodge's pawn in the past. He's the one who crippled Locke and I think that might be enough to stop Locke from ever coming here and helping us save the light. I brought Dale here because he's Cooper's son, and Locke's half-brother. There's a resemblance, not in the face or the build, but in the eyes. You can see that same passion. The fire that led Locke to the island led Dale to the Lodge. I really miss having Locke around. Even when he was afraid, he always seemed to know what to do. I was hoping Cooper might be able to take his place, help me figure it all out, but I see now that that's not the way things are laid out."

"I have to go back, don't I?"

Hugo stared up as clouds shrouded the moon.

"Yeah dude."

* * *

The sound was like cicadas humming in the core of Dale's brain. He awoke with a start and clutched his head in agony. He could not tell if the sun had risen or if an atomic bomb had been detonated outside, but the most radiant, blinding light he'd seen since the night Briggs vanished washed out his vision and left him reeling in a white void. All sense of touch was burned away by prickling warmth. All sound drowned out by the humming in his head.

Finally the light began to fade and the hum became a light, tinny ringing in his ears. Dale rubbed his eyes and stepped outside to find the sun directly above, morning having turned to noon in an instant.

From the foliage came a light rustling as Hugo approached the cabin. He wore a thick parka patched with the same octagonal symbol Dale had seen on the file folders earlier. The image was somewhat surreal.

"What happened to Walt?" Dale scanned the area, but saw no sign of his rescuer.

"He had his own path to follow, just like you've got yours. We should get moving."

Dale noted the finality in Hugo's voice. He knew this would be the end of his time in the White Lodge.

* * *

The dock had seen better days, but the boat was impeccably well maintained. A small, white sailboat moored at the end of the rickety planks emblazoned with a Latin phrase Dale was unfamiliar with: _Via Domus_. He hefted the worn bag of clothes and provisions Walt had left for him into the rear and ran a hand over the black letters.

"I guess this is goodbye." Dale wore a sad smile.

"Goodbye tends not to last forever around here. Planes crash again; detectives chase the same killers again. This world runs in cycles." Hugo put a gentle hand on Dale's shoulder and pointed out to the horizon.

"The island has moved. We're just a few miles off the coast of Washington now. You follow the bearing marked down in the boat's log and you'll be on your way back to Twin Peaks in no time."

Dale turned to face his destiny. The dark water lapped at the sides of the boat as he climbed in. He took a last, deep breath of the fresh island air.

"Hugo? One last thing before I go. What does the boat's name mean?"

Hugo smiled.

"_The way home_."

* * *

**_Epilogue._**

_Tunisia. _

_1985._

The wheel. Light. Darkness. Harsh, dry air.

Walt awoke on his back, his lungs shocked by the transition from place to place. He pulled away the Dharma jacket from the Orchid and lifted himself to his feet. His legs shook, but he regained composure and shook out the jacket to find what provisions he'd been allowed to bring on his journey.

From an inside pocket he produced the papers Ben had left for him before he went to the mainland. False birth certificate, driver's licence, and a death certificate should he ever need to disappear. He scanned the licence for his new name.

_Matthew Abaddon._

Ben had left only one other thing, a folded note that looked as if it might have been carried around for a long time before being given to Walt. It contained only two words.

_I'm sorry._


End file.
